The Necessity of Swimming

New research is showing swimming helps children reach intellectual milestones

Learning how to swim is a milestone in itself; however, did you know swimming can help your children develop intellectually? The skill of swimming is essential and also potentially life-saving. Now there is an added incentive to encourage your children to swim.

Griffith Institute for Educational Research recently conducted a study on the effects of children learning to swim at an early age and how that affected their intellectual milestones. They found children who learned to swim at a young age reached many developmental milestones earlier than children of the same age who had not learned to swim.

The research was conducted over a period of four years, sponsored by Swim Australia. It surveyed the parents of 7000 under five-year-olds from Australia, New Zealand and the United States. It also included 180 children from three to five years of age.

Every year the parents of each individual child were interviewed. They were asked questions regarding their child’s development and the responses were correlated and compared with what would be expected progression. The study found that children who swam developed visual-motor skills such as the ability to cut paper, coloring in the lines, and skills for solving mathematical-related tasks earlier than the non-swimming children in the same age group.

“Many of these skills are highly valuable in other learning environments and will be of considerable benefit for young children as they transition into preschool and school,” says Griffith Institute for Educational Research project leader, Professor Robyn Jorgensen.

These new research findings are great, especially for the swimming industry. It actively encourages those who are currently teaching or coaching to continue to make a difference in each child’s life- knowing that they are having an impact on their educational development as well.

“For a long time, we’ve understood the benefits of swimming- physically, emotionally, socially.” says Ross Gage, swim Australia CEO. “But we are very excited that our Australian Unity Learn to Swim program- offered nationwide by Swim Australia Registered Swim Schools- has been recognized as not only a leading swim program, but a program filled with potentially enhancing life skills, that could make your kid smarter.”